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January 31.
Matter, they say, is infinitely divisible. What do they mean? That it is infinitely divisible into visible parts? That is not true, for each part, to be visible, requires certain dimensions whose number is fairly limited for our eye. Do they mean that it is infinitely divisible into imaginable parts? That is not true either, for our mind, in order to imagine, requires certain figures or forms that are not infinite in number. Do they mean that it is infinitely divisible in the number and quantity of its parts? arithmetically, yes; or rather mathematically, this can be thought, but cannot really be. Every portion, every part of matter, however small one chooses to suppose it, must be matter, that is, capable of length, breadth, and depth. Consequently, if matter were infinitely divisible as is claimed, it could cease to be matter while remaining matter, which is absurd.
It is to our philosophical histories that we might say today: ah, let us pass on to the flood. Almost all wish to go back to chaos.
... busy embroidering the events of each day with your wit. What fine fabric!
For certain productions of our mind, the body’s winter is the soul’s autumn.
The truth is that one must follow etc. — A truth of conduct, important to human life and of an order far superior to all these little truths of fact of which etc. The truth is that there are a multitude of little verifications about which one should care little because etc. — What does it matter whether an old account contains a fabulous event or a real one, if the same authority that made us adopt it by inculcating it in our minds involves in it a moral containing maxims that are true, useful, necessary, indispensable? Since events contemporary with us can at first commend themselves only by the kind of merit that consists in exactness, one must take care, to the point of scrupulousness, in establishing them. But it is otherwise etc., all the more because, if there is harm in the falsity of the account, there is no less in the errors of criticism.
On fables that make themselves believed. — There are only a certain number of images, forms, arrangements under which the human mind can conceive any nature whatsoever. Opinions composed of these images and forms, and aided by these arrangements, are the only ones that can gain acceptance. The others, finding in human nature nothing analogous to themselves, cannot enter it, plant themselves in it, put down strong roots in it.
What does the fact matter if, in the account, there is not a line, not a word that does not yield instruction—an instruction to which the mind is all the more open because it is at peace, at rest, in perfect tranquility through the very credence it gives the fact, which banishes from it all disdain and all quibbling?
... This nature that is so great that, to conceive it, one must divide it and put it into pieces, so to speak.
To blind oneself holily is the accepted expression.
Mathematics is among us what the characters of their writing are for the Chinese. When, after much effort, one knows it, one knows how to read and nothing more, and yet one is quite proud.
It was not simply to read geometry that the ancients learned mathematics, but because it served to understand a kind of philosophy that expressed itself through it and was reputed to teach an admirable and hidden meaning. Some philosophers, indeed, used it as a cipher, wishing in their wisdom to be understood only by the learned. Others used it for their convenience, to be brief and make extended explanations unnecessary for themselves. For them it was a kind of abbreviated notation. To study it as we do, simply to study it, is to learn the alphabet never to read, or the scale not to sing. Mathematics, indeed, was among them only the alphabet of a host of sciences.
Our enthusiasts in this kind and our women who make lace differ only in that the latter, in executing their figures, do not know their relations, numbers, and names. The former, on the contrary, know how many times one line is worth another, in idea and on paper.
Antiquity. I prefer its ruins to its reconstructions.
February […].
Enchantment. — Do not tear the cloud (the crepon); do not destroy the atmosphere that surrounds every being if it is alive.